My father, Roy, and my mother, Rena, had four children. There were two boys and two girls. Lucille Marie was the first child. She died before I was born. Le Roy was next, then came Lois, and finally me. About six months after I was born, my father died, and I have no memory of him, except of things that others have said. He was a quiet and kindly man, I’ve been told. I hope that I have carried on that image.

The house we lived in was a small, four-room place with board walls and tarpaper on the outside to keep out most of the rain and drafts. I was born in it but somehow my memory of that is quite dim. We had a well from which we carried water, and an outhouse because there was no indoor plumbing in the country homes of the common folk. There was a favorite rock down in the woods just below the house. It was not so big that we couldn’t scramble up onto it, but big enough to be able to look down onto the woods below. Somehow there was a sense of security in being above the forest floor.

I think that the earliest memory that I have is of a Christmas shopping trip when I was just three years old. The thing that seared it into my memory was discovering that I didn’t know where my Mama was and I was all alone in a great big store. At least that is what I thought. My Uncle Burt had taken us to town to shop. We had to depend on him for travel anywhere that we couldn’t walk because my father was dead. I remember my uncle as gruff, but very kind hearted and patient. There was a five and dime store in the little town of Clarion, and that was where we were shopping. I suppose that the store was very small by today’s standards, but my world consisted of a four-room house, a coal shed, and a small barn. The store was probably as big as all of them combined. One remarkable display was a real electric train, busily going around in circles. I had never seen anything like it in my life. As I stood there fascinated, my mother stepped over to a counter to make a purchase. She probably wasn’t more than a dozen feet away, but when I looked up, all I could see was a crowd of complete strangers. I started to cry, and a kindly man came and took my hand, asking what was the matter. By the time I had sobbed out that I couldn’t find my Mama, she heard me and said, “Why Paul, I’m right here.” I can’t remember any more of that shopping trip except that I stayed very close to her from then on.

The following summer registered a few more events. I remember the visits of the Raleigh man, particularly because he always gave the three children—Le Roy, Lois and I, a stick of gum. That was a rare treat. I remember that our mother usually bought pepper and the other spices we used from him. I can still remember the green pepper box with “Raleigh” written across it in calligraphy.

Just above our small barn was a spring that sent a tiny stream down past the barn and behind the house. I remember one day when Leroy built a small dam across the stream and made a little pond with a tiny waterfall. It probably wasn’t more than two feet across, but to me it was miraculous.

In the barn we kept goats. There were three—Danny, Nanny, and Billy. Billy and I played together some. He was little more than a kid, and I would grab him by the horns for a pushing match. I can’t remember ever being upset by him, although if we had kept him until he was a little more grown, there is little doubt that I would not have been able to hold him. Danny was another story. I had to keep out of his way. I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me. On at least one occasion I poked a stick into his stall until he pawed the stable floor and “bellered” at me. I went into the house and told my mother what I had done and that he had said “Booger-rooger roof” at me. She was laughing too hard to give me the scolding that I deserved.

There was another special event that summer. My mother gave me a birthday party. A friend of the family, Flossie Broughm, gave me a pencil for a birthday gift.

There was another noteworthy occasion that summer. There was a twenty-acre field above our house, separated from it by a narrow strip of woods. One day Uncle Burt and Uncle Tom were making hay in the field when Uncle Tom came running down to tell us all to come up to the field. We ran up the lane and there, across the northern sky came the dirigible, Los Angeles. I can still picture her moving majestically across the sky.

That fall, shortly after I had turned four, we had a visit from Brother Harriff. He was a widowed man who had been writing to my mother for some time. Whether they had decided to get married by the time of that visit, I do not know. I do remember embarrassing my mother by climbing onto his lap and saying, “I’m glad I have a Daddy.” He roared with laughter and she turned bright pink. They were married in October, I believe, and we moved about forty miles to his house. It is described later in these stories.

Paul B. Campbell
January 20, 1995